Cloud Trails Ironworkers Walking In Air

`Walk On A Building, You Just Get A Rush Out Of It. . . . That's Why People Do It.'

November 07, 1993|By Frank James, Tribune Staff Writer.

Few jobs pay a working man as well as walking the beams. And not many workers have as thrilling a view of the world as an ironworker. In an age when so many factories have closed, when unions and blue collars have become endangered species, ironworkers are a link to a vanishing industrial America.

They are part of a special fraternity of union men (for they are predominantly men) who labor hard at a trade not for the faint-hearted.

The fatal accident last week at the construction site of Chicago's future main post office that killed two men was a sharp reminder of the dangers they face.

But they willingly assume the risks.

"You walk on a building, you just get a rush out of it," said Al De Fries, 49, an ironworker and superintendent for a company that specializes in rebar, shorthand for reinforcing bars his men were installing on a commercial building site in Vernon Hills last week. "You're up high, it's exciting; that's why people do it. Otherwise why would you do it? Who would want to go on a beam and go 25-35 stories in the air?"

Those with more earthbound jobs often find it hard to understand why anyone would do that, even for typical wages of $30,000 to $50,000 a year.

There are a few perfect days, but Chicago being Chicago, it is frequently cold, windy or wet, less than ideal conditions for being perched on a beam hundreds of feet up.

On a large construction site, the ironworkers are the ones wearing the distinctive hard hats, with the brims that go all the way around.

It is the classic hard hat of the once-dominant American Bridge Co.

On a large job, a standard crew is 50 to 60 ironworkers.

The younger men are usually the "connectors" on the raising gang, the people who get the beams up and in place.

A connector can often be spotted by his pants, which, because of all the wear they get from straddling beams, are heavily patched and held together with a glue called Tug-of-War.

The other men follow, putting in permanent bolts, welding, installing deckwork and finishing the structure.

The danger of their calling is never far from their minds. Ironworkers have gotten enough bruises and have heard or known of enough workers who have died on the job that they don't take chances.

"We're all supposed to try to work safe," said Ron Stone, administrator for Iron Workers Local No. 1. "Everyone wants to come back home whether you've got a family or just a TV set waiting for you."

Jay Fisher, 27, is an ironworker with a running back's build and owlish eyeglasses that give him a lawyerly appearance.

Fisher carries a pager and says his wife, Suzi, knows not to page him unless she's heard that someone has died.

After hearing the first incomplete reports of the post office collapse last week, she paged him.

"She said `I just wanted to hear your voice,' " he recalls. He said his home phone was "ringing off the hook" because people in his family had heard an ironworker died, a young bodybuilder and a member of Local 1.

They feared it might have been him.

"Everybody knows what can happen," he said. "It's just like firemen and cops."

The offices of Iron Workers Local No. 1 sit in west suburban Forest Park, three one-story buildings erected four years ago that show off the sort of work its members do, exposed beams on the outside and concrete slab walls.

A scaled-down version of a suspension bridge sits in front of the buildings, another example of ironworker craftsmanship.

The morning after the postal accident, Stone sat inside a large, bright and orderly office.

An iron worker for 37 years who worked on many of the buildings that compose Chicago's skyline, he is philosophical about the work.

He was reluctant to talk with a visitor at first.

But his love of talking about the job soon overcame his reluctance.

Three of his four sons, John, 35, David, 28, and Bill, 23, followed him into the trade.

It is common to find two or more generations from the same family in the business.

David and Bill were at the postal site when the accident happened.

They lost friends. Indeed, Pat Newsome, the 25-year-old who died, was to be in the wedding of Stone's son Bill.

The night after the collapse, the sons were so distraught they talked about doing other things.

"I told them, `I could tell you to quit, don't work no more, go get a job working in a gas station," Stone said. "But I said, `You might live to be 80 and you're going to need money. So let's be realistic. You've got to go where you can make the most money.' It's easy to say you're going to quit and don't do this. But it don't work that way. Life's not run by a one day thing."

It bothered Stone that no one pays much attention to ironworkers-and by extension other craftspeople-until there is an accident.

"Once in a while somebody takes a picture of a guy walking on a beam and you see it in the paper . . . But nobody cares about an ironworker, nobody cares about a carpenter or a pipefitter until one of them dies or a building falls down."